By Shaenon K. Garrity
Our columnists are independent writers who choose subjects and write without editorial input from comiXology. The opinions expressed are the columnist's, and do not represent the opinion of comiXology.
Being a Manifesto Based on Talking About Comics with the Young People of Today, Sometimes in the Classroom, Usually Not, Occasionally Sober.
1. Newspaper comics are dead. I wish it were otherwise, but it's impossible to get around the fact that no one under a certain age—and that age gets higher all the time—considers newspapers essential daily reading. The strip format will survive online, and maybe in other print media (four-panel comics are currently very popular in Japan, where they typically run in weekly magazines in chunks of six strips at a time), but the classic syndicated newspaper strip has been dying for a long time and I see little hope for resuscitation. Enjoy Richard Thompson's glorious
Cul de Sac, because it's probably the last great comic strip.
2 Monthly comic books are dead. We all know this, right? Again, it's a format with a lot of good qualities that will be sorely missed (foremost among them the ability to sample a story cheaply before investing in an entire book), but the direct market is a mess and pamphlet-style monthly comic books now barely work even as loss leaders. Among younger readers, "waiting for the trade" is the default position, to the point that most teenage fans seem only foggily aware that the monthly format even exists.
The comic book could have survived if the direct market hadn't been run, since the 1990s, like a less competent and smellier version of one of those fly-by-night outfits that hawk gold on the Glenn Beck show, but, as Kurt Vonnegut said about the fate of the planet Earth in general, we were too damn lazy to try very hard…and too damn cheap.
3. Format is infinitely mutable. But so what? You'll pick up the trade. You'll read it online. The age-old format wars and lamentations on the death of beloved antique media are gibberish to anyone under 30. What's the difference between comic strips and graphic novels, comic books and manga? It's all comics. Comics run left and right, up and down, short and long. Few of the kids I've dealt with have read Scott McCloud's
Understanding Comics, but none of them are remotely surprised by anything it has to say.
Similarly, younger readers see minimal difference between a novel and a graphic novel. One of them tells the story in pictures, is all. Speaking of which, I support Mo Willems's suggestion to abolish terms like "graphic novel" and categorize all visual sequential storytelling as either "comics" or "fat comics."
4. The audience is infinitely fragmented. Contrary to popular belief, a lot of teenage comics fans don't read manga. Or they used to read manga, but they've long since moved on to something else. There's almost nothing that
everybody reads. I've talked to kids for whom
Scott Pilgrim is the modern equivalent of
Watchmen—a seminal reshaping of the pop-cult universe they inhabit—and kids who have never heard of it, kids who only read shonen manga and kids who only read shojo manga, kids who are only interested in goth comics or zombie comics or
Fables. Open the discussion to webcomics, and the audience fragments all the way down to the tip of the long tail; on the Internet, everyone is famous for fifteen people.
5. But there is a canon. As best I can determine, the majority of comics-loving people under 30 have at least a passing familiarity with the following:
Calvin & Hobbes
Bone
Naruto
Death Note
Watchmen
…and a handful of webcomics, but the latest big thing in webcomics shifts so frequently that I can't even add titans like
Penny Arcade and
xkcd to the list with any confidence.
Is this the canon I would have chosen to lead the next generation into the great big beautiful tomorrow of comics? Probably not, but it's not bad. Definitely better than the canon I cut my teeth on, which contained far more Batman than was healthy for the nerds of Generation X.
6. Superheroes are not comic-book characters. They're characters in movies and TV shows. If superheroes or superhero-like characters appear in a comic, that's cool, but it's not what comics are generally about.
The Umbrella Academy, for example, is a fantasy story, kind of a goth
Harry Potter, about a group of kids born with strange powers who are trained to use those powers at a private school run by a mysterious old man. It's not a superhero comic.
The X-Men? Oh, I used to love that show!
7. Manga has changed the game. Young creators think in terms of the sprawling, subjective, emotional approach to visual storytelling shared, to one degree or another, by most manga. They've picked up other ideas from mainstream manga, too. Focus on characters over plot. A love for iconic, instantly appealing character designs (but not, unfortunately, a love for bothering to draw backgrounds). And total comfort with merchandising. Why would you
not want something fun made out of your characters?
8. The line between fans and creators is razor-thin. Comics is an industry with a low bar to entry. It's always been fairly easy to make the leap from fan to creator, or at least part-time dabbler. But it's rapidly becoming less of a leap and more of a gentle saunter. You post drawings on DeviantArt, you share some hastily-penciled pages on social networking sites, maybe you make a website, more likely you just set up a blog, and you're a cartoonist. Until you get tired of that and go back to being a fan.
9. They are mostly girls. Publishers, be ready for this.
10. They are very good at making comics. This too. It is going to be wonderful.
Shaenon K. Garrity is a manga editor at Viz Media and is best known for her webcomics Narbonic and Skin Horse.
All the Comics in the World is © Shaenon K. Garrity, 2010
